“’Tis the blue of your gown,” he remarked. “The one you wore when we first met.”
She looked at him, near disbelief in her eyes. “I still have it but haven’t worn it since—”
Since you left.
He’d tried to pin that blue down a thousand times in the last decade. Caribbean blue. Delft blue. Egyptian blue. Marine blue, the official color of British naval uniforms. Cobalt blue.
Lapis lazuli. Aye, that was it.
She squinted into the sunlight, and he looked to the sea and then the lighthouse when she said, “So shall we kindle the light tonight, you and I?”
How romantic she made it sound. A joint effort. The first of many, he hoped. “Aye, I want you to shadow me for a sennight or so, till we know the ins and outs of the tower and its workings and you’re comfortable enough to handle it on your own.”
“Will you be here a sennight more?” The shadow he’d found inher face when he’d seen her at Lady Lightfoot’s ball returned, eclipsing her loveliness.
“I know not.” How he wanted to throw any future cruise to the wind and remain right here. Even now he sensed there was more to her arrival than keeping the light. His appointing her as lightkeeper had been far from objective.
Would it all play out like it had years before when they’d first parted?
He sent his concerns heavenward, the sunlit moment weighed down by dark thoughts.
“Then we shall make the most of the time given us.” Her smile was soft, a bit sad. It tore at him in a way little else did.
Gone was the spirited girl who had objected so strenuously to his going to sea. He hardly knew what to do with the composed woman in her place.
She took his extended hand, and he helped her over a rocky outcropping. “Is it true you forbid married men from joining your crew?”
He gave a nod. “Mostly out of respect to you.”
Her green gaze came back to him. Tears stood in her eyes. His own throat closed and threatened to choke him.
At last he said, “I took to heart all you said back then—the toll on your family with your father away, your mother especially.”
She leaned down and picked up a cracked shell. “I wish I’d known. It might have softened my regard of you.”
He took a breath and revealed the rest. “I had a small chest of letters I wrote you but never sent.”
The shell was discarded. “Do you have them still?”
His aye earned such a bittersweet look it sank his stomach to his boots.
“Might you give them to me after all?”
Would he? “The heartsick ponderings of a sailor?” He’d nearly thrown the chest overboard on more than one melancholy occasion. “Mayhap when I sail again.”
“Please.” The entreaty in her voice decided the matter.
“Do you forgive me for leaving?” He looked toward the line ofsmoke that marked the Flask and Sword’s chimney. “For forsaking what we had?”
A gull swooped in, shattering the air with its cry.
“Only if you’ll forgive me for making it an all-or-nothing arrangement.” The mist in her eyes returned. “That was unconscionable.”
“We were young. Foolish.”
“And now?” Pensiveness limned her words. “We are...”
“Older. Wiser.” He said the last word with a shake of his head. “Friends.”
